


we’re the center of our universe

by unbridgeabledistances



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: (sort of), Canon Compliant, Fix-It, Fluff, Healthy Communication, Light Angst, M/M, about boundaries!!!!, about the non-monogamy situation, i wrote this to make myself feel better lol, just some boys in love communicating!!!, to quell any big feelings people are having post 11x07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:48:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29909610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unbridgeabledistances/pseuds/unbridgeabledistances
Summary: Mickey was slouched back on the couch, his chin practically touching his chest, playing some game that involved him turning his phone sideways and lazily shooting pixelated zombies. Ian looked over at him for a moment, taking in Mickey’s relaxed face and the solid press of Mickey’s body against his side…And he had to fucking do it.It wasn’t like Ian wanted to bring up the conversation again, about monogamy and boundaries and fuck-knows-what-else; but these past few weeks had been hard, like something cavernous was cracking and splintering between them. Their banter had slowly turned less and less humorous, and more pointed and jagged, about who was the breadwinner and who was the “man”; and even though they’d patched it up and built small bridges between them, and had hung off of each other’s bodies at Lip’s apartment the night Ian had brought up the monogamy conversation for the first time, Ian couldn’t help but feel the weight of the things unsaid wriggling and rustling inside him, like a germinating seed about to bloom.--or, a communicative little one-shot of ian and mickey discussing their boundaries and processing traumas
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Comments: 27
Kudos: 165





	we’re the center of our universe

**Author's Note:**

> as per usual, wrote this very quickly as a little episode prequel/one-shot, but it got long enough that i wanted to make it a fic of its own— i hope that u enjoy!<3

It was one of those casual, routine evenings at the Gallagher house when Ian brought it up again, a couple of long weeks after that first conversation on the front porch under the streetlights. They were all lounging in the living room during the slow, undefined hours after dinner, when Carl and usually Ian and Mickey would sit hunched around the TV, passively watching some movie or cartoon while they scrolled through their phones.

That night, Debbie and Sandy were having some sort of erratic spat in the kitchen, and the shrieks back and forth were making it hard to hear the crashing and blaring of the action movie that Mickey had picked out coming from the TV’s speakers— after a couple minutes of _trying_ to make out the movie’s dialogue, Carl stood up with a huff and flicked off the TV with the remote that had been shoved between the cushions of the chair in the corner, stretching and standing up to head down to the basement.

“Night, guys.”

“Night Carl,” Ian replied, and then kept looking down at the Instagram feed he’d been circling through for a good hour while trying to tune out Debbie once again shouting at Sandy for “traumatizing” her by keeping secrets. They’d had the same fight almost every night for the past few weeks since Debbie had discovered that Sandy was living in her car, and had been married to some random guy when she was a teenager or some shit like that— Ian honestly wasn’t even going to ask, but he’d heard the conversation enough times to be uninterested enough to drown it out.

Franny was sitting with splayed knees on the living room carpet, playing some elaborate game with Liam’s truck toys and little Lego construction workers, that had been stowed in the cabinet but Franny had somehow dug out a few weeks ago, causing yet another one of Debbie’s conniptions— and finally the voices in the kitchen trailed off, like they always did once Debbie ran out of steam and got tired of victimizing herself.

“Time for bed, Fran.”

Debbie came into the room and scooped Franny up from where she was sitting, trudging up the stairs with Franny in tow and Sandy trailing close behind—

And then suddenly it was just he and Mickey in the living room, pressed thigh-to-thigh and knee-to-knee beside each other on the couch, resting in the rare but comforting weight of the silence.

Mickey was slouched back on the couch, his chin practically touching his chest, playing some game that involved him turning his phone sideways and lazily shooting pixelated zombies. Ian looked over at him for a moment, taking in Mickey’s relaxed face and the solid press of Mickey’s body against his side…

And he had to fucking do it.

It wasn’t like Ian _wanted_ to bring up the conversation again, about monogamy and boundaries and fuck-knows-what-else; but these past few weeks had been hard, like something cavernous was cracking and splintering between them. Their banter had slowly turned less and less humorous, and more pointed and jagged, about who was the breadwinner and who was the “man”; and even though they’d patched it up and built small bridges between them, and had hung off of each other’s bodies at Lip’s apartment the night Ian had brought up the monogamy conversation for the first time, Ian couldn’t help but feel the weight of the things unsaid wriggling and rustling inside him, like a germinating seed about to bloom.

Ian totally understood why, the moment he had mentioned “fucking other people” during that conversation on the porch, he had immediately felt Mickey’s knee stiffen where his palm had been resting on it. There was so much shit they hadn’t talked about—so it made sense that Mickey had immediately bristled when Ian had brought this all up the way that he did, and had put himself on high-alert and fled the scene the moment Carl came through the gate.

It would be so easy to just… not bring it up again. But Ian knew they needed to talk it out, and needed to let out all of the questions that were hanging on the edge of his lips like a ticking time bomb. If there was one thing that Ian knew, it was that Mickey was sensitive about this shit; the last thing that Ian wanted to do was crack and fall through the thin ice he was walking on and accidentally push Mickey away if he made some comment about another guy being hot, or if he reciprocated some dude checking him out at Kev’s gym— if Mickey had gotten upset at the fact that he only had 87% of Ian’s heart, some stupid comment that came out of Ian’s mouth before his brain could really process how he knew Mickey would feel about it, then how was Ian supposed to know what was and what wasn’t okay?

The problem was, talking about all of this shit so explicitly with Mickey felt like trying to walk upstream; things with he and Mickey had always just kind of… flowed, and had never been spelled out or agreed upon or set in stone, at least until he was leaving Mickey in prison and they kind of _had_ to strongarm themselves into talking about what they wanted to future to hold. Even with the proposal and the marriage shit, they had just sort of stumbled their way into it, without explicitly needing to sit down and spell it all out. If he was being honest, Ian fucking loved that; he loved that he and Mickey’s relationship was a roller coaster, a high-speed train ride that they didn’t know the stops of. Things with Mickey just _happened_ the way they were supposed to, in a way they never had with anyone else that Ian had ever been with. He remembered Trevor’s goading about boundaries and sex positivity and communication, and how at first it felt like Ian had marbles rolling around in his mouth as he tried to stumble over words like “ethical non-monogamy” and “compersion” and “polyamory”; it felt like he was speaking a foreign fucking language, like he was talking about things he couldn’t quite grasp— and he didn’t want to push Mickey into feeling that way. But as much as he hated it, he knew they had to at least talk about it; there were too many things left unsaid, too many holes they needed to patch up before slipping through one them.

So that’s why, with a gentle creeping of his fingertips from his own lap to rest on Mickey’s upper thigh, Ian said the words into the soft silence of the living room:

“Mick, we’ve gotta talk about the whole monogamy thing again.”

Instantly, in a sensation that was fully reminiscent of that night a few weeks ago, Ian felt Mickey’s torso stiffen beneath him.

Mickey sniffed, then hesitantly pressed his thumb up to his phone screen to pause the game he was playing mid-level. Mickey’s body was still slumped and leaning on the couch, but now there was a new rigidity to the way he was sitting, like he was bracing himself for something. He clicked off his phone and shoved it into his pocket, then looked down at his hands.

“Don’t know why you think we gotta talk about all this shit, man. We already did your thing with the paper and you said you didn’t wanna fuck other people.”

Ian let out a breath, then snaked an arm across the back of the couch so it was just barely touching where Mickey’s shoulders were leaning, just to where he could feel the heat radiating up from Mickey’s body. If he was going to fucking do this, he needed Mickey to be close to him—he needed their bodies to be pressed together a little more than they already were.

“Yeah, but I guess… I never really got a chance to hear how you feel.”

Mickey’s body tensed up again; Ian could feel his shoulders clenching beneath his where his arm was limply strewn across the back of the couch.

“I don’t know, man.”

Ian swallowed down the sudden wave of resentment he started to feel that Mickey wouldn’t just _say_ what he was _feeling_ , and took a deep breath. Sometimes Mickey just didn’t know _how_ , and he needed to sit there and acclimate to the airwaves that were bouncing between them before Ian could pull something out of him, or before Mickey could pull something out of himself. Ian let them just sit there, and let himself fixate his eyes on the rise and fall of Mickey’s chest under his tattered t-shirt; and after a moment, he decided to give a gentle nudge, to at least get the ball rolling towards the depths of wherever Mickey’s head was at.

“So do you… wanna fuck other people?”

Mickey made an airy popping sound by smacking his lips together— like he was trying to do anything with his mouth except let words rest inside it, like he was trying to puncture the blanket of silence with a sharp sound. Ian waited.

“Or is it— that you think I want to fuck other people?” He could hear how cautious his own voice sounded, like he was tiptoeing onto uncertain territory, gently coursing into rough and uncharted waters.

Ian felt an almost imperceptible slump work its way back into Mickey’s rigid shoulders. _Oh_.

He leaned himself closer towards Mickey’s warm body, wrapping his arm down off the back of the couch and directly onto Mickey’s shoulders, feeling the soft bristles of Mickey’s hair pressing up against the crook of his elbow.

“Hey.” Ian tried to keep his voice soft, soft. “I know it fucking sucks, but we’ve gotta talk about this. I don’t ever wanna do shit you aren't okay with.”

Mickey raised his chin, leaning back onto Ian’s arm, and flickered his eyes to meet his gaze.

“You really don’t wanna fuck other people?”

It was the same question Mickey had asked the other night on the porch, the first time they'd had this conversation— but this time there was no bravado to it, no directness or volume like the way Mickey had asked that night with his eyebrows raised. This time he asked in a low voice, a voice that was husky and soft around the edges. Ian squeezed Mickey’s shoulder.

“Mickey, I got married to you. I don’t really know what you thought that meant— but for me, it pretty much means fucking you til the day I die.”

Mickey hesitantly rolled his eyes, blowing a puff of air out of his mouth. “But, like— fucking _only_ me?”

Ian took a deep breath and steeled himself for the messier part of conversations like this, the part where he tried to get Mickey to split himself open. “You’ve gotta give me more than that, Mick. What’re you asking?”

Mickey looked down at his hands again, running his fingertips over a loose thread at the bottom of his shirt. “I don’t know, man. Guys are always droolin’ over you. Just don’t want to hold you back.” Ian felt the rise of Mickey’s shoulders, the breath of air being let into his lungs. “I just don’t wanna not be enough for you, or whatever. Don’t want you to regret shit a couple of years down the line.”

 _Not be enough for me?_ If this didn’t feel like a serious and slightly terrifying, fragile conversation to have, Ian could have laughed in Mickey’s face— how could Mickey think that he wasn’t enough for him, when he was the fucking focal point, at the center of everything? Ian didn’t know what words could radiate that out of him, could make Mickey _get_ it— he opted for another squeeze of Mickey’s shoulders, and then migrated his hand under Mickey’s chin and forced their eyes to meet.

“Mick.” He tried to ooze every ounce of certainty, every ounce of resolve that he was feeling, into his voice. “You’re more than enough for me, are you fucking kidding? You’re all I ever think about— if you weren’t enough for me, I wouldn’t have married you. I know what that means, I always have.”

Even saying the words aloud, Ian quickly flashed back to _it’s just a piece of paper_ , to back when Mickey smelled of cheap cologne and bitter smoke in an oversized tux— even then, Ian knew what marriage meant, knew the weight of it, and that’s why Mickey getting married that day tore him apart. Ian wouldn’t have done this, wouldn’t have said “I do” if he wasn’t ready for _all_ of that— so why did Mickey think that he wasn’t?

The tension was creeping back in between Mickey’s shoulder blades. “Took you a while to decide to do that, though.”

Ian paused. They’d rehashed this shit enough times, but it still always stung to think back to when he was too wrapped up in his own shit to think outside of his own spirals of self-doubt, and left Mickey bleeding at the altar in the process. He didn’t know how to put it into words; Mickey had just always been _everything_ , had always been a solid presence inside him, tugging at his heartstrings so tangibly that it made him ache; Ian had a bullshit complex about marriage, but not one about his iron-heavy commitment. Mickey _had_ to understand that by now— but it seemed like there were scars there that still hadn’t been healed.

Which made Ian wonder— where else was this coming from?

Ian cupped his hand below Mickey’s chin again, raising his other hand from his lap and reaching up to push Mickey’s hair out of his face—a gentle touch, a touch to root him and give him something to hold on to more than anything else.

“Hey. Look at me.” Mickey’s eyes met his. “S’there anything else you’ve been holding in about this monogamy stuff?”

Mickey’s eyes flickered downward— and there it was, Mickey’s defenses were being raised, just like they always were at first. But Ian knew how to breach them, knew how to wait it out. He reached his hand downward, intertwining it with Mickey’s limp fingers and giving his hand a squeeze. Mickey dryly cleared his throat.

“You remember that night, before you, uh. You left with Yev or whatever. And you did the porno with that guy.”

Ian felt an ache of awareness rip through his solar plexus, as the words continued to tumble out of Mickey’s mouth.

“It fucking gutted me, man. That and… all the shit with you running off. Not coming to visit me in prison. And I know we’ve talked about it, and I know we’re over it, and I know wasn’t your fault; but I can’t stop feeling like this”—he paused, eyes flickering down at their clasped hands, their pair of silver rings— “that this might be too good to be true.”

Ian felt something hollow ache in his chest. He couldn’t believe they’d never really talked about all of this, never dug this deep, even in the endless blank calendar squares of their days and months in prison together— sure, Mickey had called out Ian’s shit about leaving him over and over again, but he’d never really said the words out loud, never pinpricked Ian’s actions so specifically.

He’d left Mickey, hadn’t he? Even when he didn't mean to, even when it wasn't his fault— that wasn't just going to go away.

A nauseating awareness started to drip through Ian’s veins. He sat frozen on the couch, planted there— not really sure what to say, not sure what words could patch the holes in something solid that he didn’t even realize were there all these years later. While his mind was whirring, Mickey spoke again— he met Ian’s gaze, and this time the iron shutters in his eyes betrayed a trace of pain, just sharp enough for Ian to barely see it.

“Can we go to bed? And talk about all this shit in the morning?”

Ian felt an indecipherable lump in his throat— and he nodded.

**

Mickey had climbed the stairs slowly, and Ian had trailed behind— and now Ian was laying flat in the bed, all changed into a worn tank top and boxers while Mickey brushed his teeth down the hall. Ian propped his upper back on a pillow he had shoved next to the wall, trying to sift through all the emotions that were swirling and buzzing in his head, threatening to pull him under. How was he supposed to _fix_ this?

Mickey turned the corner into the room, lingered in the doorway. He looked deflated, and _tired_ — and instantly, Ian needed to bridge the gap between them, needed to feel Mickey warming the empty sheets beside him.

“C’mere.”

Mickey almost comically collapsed onto the bed like a ragdoll— between the conversation downstairs and the few moments they took apart in separate spaces, something small had dissipated, something had turned less brittle and was starting to bend. Ian instantly shifted to his side and wrapped his arms around Mickey, locking his fingers behind Mickey’s head, overtaking his sight line and holding him close in the bed. Mickey gave a half smile— an acknowledgement.

“Hey.” He heard the note of thickness in his own voice. “I’m so fucking sorry. For… everything. Fuck.”

Mickey coiled an arm around Ian’s waist, laying a palm on the small of his back, soaking him in.

“I know. Just gotta give me some time. And we've got all the time in the world, Gallagher.”

Ian breathed out. “Fuck. Yeah.”

He pulled Mickey closer, until Mickey was almost on top of his chest, his face pressed into the crook of Ian’s neck. He listened to Mickey’s steady breath, feeling the curls of it tickle his chin. Ian reached over to switch off the lamp on the bedside table, then pulled Mickey in closer, slotting a leg between his.

After a moment, he broke the silence.

“So. Monogamy?”

He felt Mickey’s chest vibrate with a breathy laugh. “I don’t know, man. What do you think?”

Ian grinned, feeling something fizzle out of him. He prodded Mickey in the side. “Come on, Mick. What do you want? Actually?” 

Ian felt Mickey’s ribcage expand and retract from where he was pressed against him. “I don’t wanna fuck anyone else, man.” Ian breathed out; and he was about to let out a gust of _see, that wasn’t that hard, was it_ — when Mickey spoke up again.

“But I guess… we could talk about doing stuff. Together?”

_Holy shit._

Mickey’s words kept flowing, his breath running hot against Ian’s neck as his words floated through the dark room. “I don’t wanna be with any guy that isn’t you. But it might be kinda fun to like— I don’t know, try that shit some day? Like those hot fuckin’ pornos or whatever.” He breathed out a laugh. “Never thought I’d get to try that shit, and probably never will— but it’d be fun... to try? If you ever wanna.” Mickey paused. “But that’s where I draw the fucking line, man.”

Ian barked out a laugh—and instantly felt a weird, warm sense of pride welling up in his chest. This was Mickey asking for what he _wanted_ —this was Mickey letting Ian in, letting him have all of it, and showing that he trusted him despite all the high and lows they’d both muddled through. This was miles beyond what he would have guessed Mickey would’ve been comfortable with, with all of his Terry-inflicted internalized homophobia still thawing somewhere deep inside him— but he was in. It honestly sounded... fucking hot, all the more because Mickey was so into the idea. 

Ian was so fucking glad that they were talking about this— if this was what Mickey wanted, at some point down the line, he would give it to him. He would give him everything.

Ian pressed a kiss to the curve of Mickey’s jaw, just below his earlobe. “God, Mick.”

Mickey just wriggled closer to Ian, almost like he was nervous. “Yeah?”

“If it makes you excited to do shit with other guys together—only together—than we can totally fucking do that. But _only_ if you want to. I don’t need anything else, Mick— you’re all I need. You’ve gotta know that.”

For the first time in what felt like hours, the ice had thawed from behind Mickey’s eyes when he pulled back to meet Ian’s gaze— Ian could make out the glint of light in the darkness. “I know.”

And as he pulled Mickey’s close and pressed the pulse of their lips together, he was sure of one thing: that Mickey belonged to him, and he belonged to Mickey.

Whatever they tried (or didn’t try)—they would do it together.

**Author's Note:**

> i hope u enjoyed! comments/kudos make my heart happy<3


End file.
